Hi all

I'm really getting into my various racing titles now (currently back to NFS Shift #1 which with the right mods gives a pretty tight nice racing experience).

My main problem remains: Everything above 5 to 10 laps is a horror to drive. I can pick my AI difficulty and car setup such that I have a challenging but manageable race from the back of the grid to the front in the first few laps. Then I can stay there for another three or four laps. And then I'll start screwing up, smaller or larger mistakes costing me positions I can never recover.

Also of course lots of errors happening while chasing someone versus few to no errors in Practice and Qualifying, so the actual race business freaks me out.

Same thing for Shift, SBK, Formula 1. Doesn't matter which car or track. Anything that goes beyond 5 laps means I lose stamina and concentration (even in titles that don't model tire wear, so it can't be that).

Now in real life on the motorbike track, I noticed that while I'm not very fast, at least I'm constant. Actually surprisingly constant (about 1 second per lap for laps with 2:30 total time). It's nowhere near as badly up/down as it is on the PC (arguable on the PC I'm more on the edge of traction for obvious reasons).

But it's also clear that placing the line constantly and repeatly trough every turn is also easier in real life. Maybe I need better input devices?

BTW, it's pretty amazing how much the feeling of a real life track day translates into and improves the immersion on the virtual track. The hunt for the apex, the earliest possible throttle twist out of a turn, when you've tried it in real life it's much more visceral to find the last little bit of traction and speed on the PC. I wasn't driving more than 75% on the edge of the physics engine in my titles before my track outing. Now I'm much better at working to keep it 95% on the edge without flying off. Highly recommended for everyone to try a real life event once or twice a year at least.